Quit Your Worrying!, George Wharton James [most recommended books txt] 📗

the littleness, the meanness, the paltriness of such jealousies; of the worries that come from them. How any human being is to be pitied whose mortal mind is corroded with the biting acid of jealous worry. When I see those who are full of worry because yielding to this demon of jealousy I am almost inclined to believe in the old-time Presbyterian doctrine of "total depravity." Whenever, where-ever, you find yourself feeling jealous, take yourself by the throat (figuratively), and strangle the feeling, then go and frankly congratulate the person of whom you are jealous upon some good you can truthfully say you see in him; spread his praises abroad; seek to do him honor. Thus by active work against your own paltry emotion you will soon overcome it and be free from its damning and damnable worries.

Akin to the worries of jealousy are the worries of hate. How much worry hate causes the hater, he alone can tell. He spends hours in conjuring up more reasons for his hate than he would care to write down. Every success of the hated is another stimulant to worry, and each step forward is a sting full of pain and bitterness.

He who hates walks along the path of worry, and so long as he hates he must worry. Hence, there is but one practical way of escape from the worries of hatred, viz., by ceasing to hate, by overcoming evil with good.

CHAPTER XX THE WORRIES OF SUSPICION

He who has a suspicious mind is ever the prey of worry. Such an one is to be pitied for he is tossed hither and yon, to and fro, at the whim of every breath of suspicion he breathes. He has no real peace of mind, no content, no unalloyed joy, for even in his hours of pleasure, of recreation, of expected jollity he is worrying lest someone is trying to get ahead of him, his vis-a-vis is "jollying" him, his partner at golf is trying to steal a march on him, he is not being properly served at the picnic, etc.

These suspicious-minded people are sure that every man is a scoundrel at heart—more or less—and needs to be watched; no man or woman is to be trusted; every grocer will sand his sugar, chicory his coffee, sell butterine for butter, and cold-storage eggs for fresh if he gets a chance. To accept the word of a stranger is absurd, as it is also to believe in the disinterestedness of a politician, reformer, office-holder, a corporation, or a rich man. But to believe evil, to expect to be swindled, or prepare to be deceived is the height of perspicacity and wisdom. How wonderfully Shakspere in Othello portrays the wretchedness of the suspicious man. One reason why Iago so hated the Moor was that he suspected him:

               the thoughts whereof
  Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards,
  And nothing can or shall content my soul
  Till I am even'd with him.

How graphic the simile, "gnaw my inwards;" it is the perpetual symbol of worry; the poisonous mineral ever biting away the lining of the stomach; just as mice and rats gnaw at the backs of the most precious books and destroy them; aye, as they gnaw during the night-time and drive sleep away from the weary, so does suspicion gnaw with its sharp worrying teeth to the destruction of peace, happiness and joy.

Then, when Iago has poisoned Othello's mind with suspicions about his wife, how the Moor is worried, gnawed by them:

    By heaven, he echoes me,
  As if there were some monster in his thought
  Too hideous to be shown—(To Iago) Thou dost mean something.
  I heard thee say even now, thou lik'dst not that,
  When Cassio left my wife; what didst not like?
  And when I told thee he was of my counsel
  In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst 'Indeed!'
  And didst contract and purse thy brow together,
  As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain
  Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me,
  Show me thy thought.

And then we know, how, with crafty, devilish cunning, Iago plays upon these suspicions, fans their spark into flames. He pretends to be doing it purely on Othello's account and accuses himself that:

             it is my nature's plague
  To spy into abuses, and yet my jealousy
  Shapes faults that are not:

and then cries out:

             O beware, my lord, of jealousy!
  It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
  The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
  Who certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
  But, O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
  Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!

There, indeed, the woe of the suspicious is shown. His minutes are really "damned;" peace flies his heart, rest from his couch, sanity from his throne, and, yielding himself, he becomes filled with murderous anger and imperils his salvation here and hereafter.

CHAPTER XXI THE WORRIES OF IMPATIENCE

How many of our worries come from impatience? We do not want to wait until the fruition of our endeavors comes naturally, until the time is ripe, until we are ready for that which we desire. We wish to overrule conditions which are beyond our power; we fail to accept the inevitable with a good grace; we refuse to believe in our circumscriptions, our limitations, and in our arrogance and pride express our anger, our indignation, our impatience.

I have seen people whose auto has broken down, worried fearfully because they would not arrive somewhere as they planned, and in their impatient fretfulness they annoyed, angered, and upset all around them, without, in one single degree, improving their own condition or hastening the repair of the disaster. What folly; what more than childish foolishness.

A child may be excused for its impatience and petulance for it has not yet learned the inevitable facts of life—such as that breaks must be repaired, tires must be made so that they will not leak, and that the gasoline tank cannot be empty if the machine is to run. But a man, a woman, is supposed to have learned these incontrovertible facts, and should, at the same time, have learned acquiesence in them.

A train is delayed; one has an important engagement; worry seems inevitable and excusable. But is it? Where is the use? Will it replace the destroyed bridge, renew the washed out track, repair the broken engine? How much better to submit to the inevitable with graceful acceptance of the fact, than to fret, stew, worry, and at the same time, irritate everyone around you.

How serenely Nature rebukes the impatience of the fretful worrier. A man plants corn, wheat, barley, potatoes—or trees, that take five, seven years to come to bearing, such as the orange, olive, walnut, date, etc. Let him fret ever so much, worry all he likes, chafe and fret every hour; let him go and dig up his seeds or plants to urge their upgrowing; let him even swear in his impatient worry and threaten to smash all his machinery, discharge his men, and turn his stock loose; Nature goes on her way, quietly, unmoved, serenely, unhurried, undisturbed by the folly of the one creature of earth who is so senseless as to worry—viz., man.

Many a man's hair has turned gray, and many a woman's brow and cheeks have become furrowed because of fretful, impatient worry over something that could not be changed, or hastened, or improved.

My conception of life is that manhood, womanhood, should rise superior to any and all conditions and circumstances. Whatever happens, Spirit should be supreme, superior, in control. And until we learn that lesson, life, so far, has failed. Inasmuch as we do learn it, life has become a success.

CHAPTER XXII THE WORRIES OF ANTICIPATION

He crosses every bridge before he comes to it, is a graphic and proverbial rendering of a description of the man who worries in anticipation. Something, sure, is going to happen. He is always fearful, not of what is, but of what is going to be. For twenty years he has managed to live and pay his rent, but at the beginning of each month he begins afresh to worry where "next month's rent is going to come from." He's collected his bills fairly well for a business life-time, but if a debtor fails to send in his check on the very day he begins to worry and fear lest he fail to receive it. His wife has given him four children, but at the coming of the fifth he is sure something extraordinarily painful and adverse is going to happen.

He sees—possibly, here, I should say, she sees—their son climbing a tree. She is sure he will fall and break a leg, an arm, or his neck. Her boy mustn't ride the horse lest he fall and injure himself; if he goes to swim he is surely in danger of being drowned, and she could never allow him or his sister to row in a boat lest it be overturned. The child must be watched momentarily, lest it fall out of the window, search out a sharp knife, swallow poison, or do some irreparable damage to the bric-a-brac.

Here let me relate an incident the truth of which is vouched for, and which clearly illustrates the difference between the attitude of worry and that of trust. One day, when Flattich, a pious minister of the Wurtemberg, was seated in his armchair, one of his foster children fell out of a second-story window, right before him, to the pavement below. He calmly ordered his daughter to go and bring up the child. On doing so it was found the little one had sustained no injury. A neighbor, however, aroused by the noise, came in and reproached Flattich for his carelessness and inattention. While she was thus remonstrating, her own child, which she had brought with her, fell from the bench upon which she had seated it, and broke its arm. "Do you see, good woman," said the minister, "if you imagine yourself to be the sole guardian of your child, then you must constantly carry it in your arms. I commend my children to God; and even though they then fall, they are safer than were I to devote my whole time and attention to them."

Those who anticipate evils for their children too often seem to bring down upon their loved ones the very evils they are afraid of. And one of the greatest lessons of life, and one that brings immeasurable and uncountable joys when learned, is, that Nature—the great Father-Mother of us all—is kindly disposed to us. We need not be so alarmed, so fearful, so anticipatory of evil at her hands.

Charles Warren Stoddard used to tell of the great dread Mark Twain was wont to feel, during the exhaustion and reaction he felt at the close of each of his lectures, lest he should become incapable of further writing and lecturing and therefore become dependent upon his friends and die a pauper. How wonderfully he conquered this demon of perpetual worry all those who know his life are aware; how that, when his publisher failed he took upon himself a heavy financial burden, for which he was in no way responsible, went on a lecture tour around the world and paid every cent of it, and finally died with his finances in a most prosperous condition.

The anticipatory worries of others are just as senseless, foolish and absurd as were those of Mark Twain, and it is possible for every man to overcome them, even as did he.

The cloud we anticipate seldom, if ever, comes, and then, generally, in a different direction from where we sought it. Time spent on looking for the cloud, and figuring how much of injury it will do us had better be utilized in garnering the hay crop, bringing in the lambs, or hauling warm fodder and bedding for them.

There is another side, however, to this worrying anticipation of troubles. The ancient philosophers recognized it. Lucan wrote: "The very fear of approaching evil has driven many into peril."

There are those who believe that the very concentration of thought upon a possible evil will bring to pass the peculiar arrangement of circumstances that makes the evil. Of this belief I am not competent to speak, but I am fully assured that it is far from helpful to be contemplating the possibility of evil. In my own life I have found that worrying over evils in anticipation has not prevented their coming, and, on the other hand, that where I have boldly faced the situation, without fear and its attendant worries, the evil has fled.

Hence, whether worries in hand, or worries to come, worries real or worries imaginary, the